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I get a lot of emails. A lot. I write for half a dozen tech sites, and my email is either on them, or easily found. I answer as many as I can, just like I did when I was in charge of letters to the editor at Home Theater.

One common theme is people looking for, or expecting, a perfect device. They’ve either stressed themselves out looking at every possible variable, or they’re disappointed because what they bought isn’t flawless.

Here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as a perfect product. Here’s why.

I’ve reviewed hundreds of products in my career, and I can only think of a handful I’d consider remotely close to perfect. I think they’re worth talking about, so we can see what goes “wrong.”

I reviewed the Bose QuietComfort 20 a few months ago. They’re as well and wonderfully designed product as I’ve reviewed. Excellent noise cancelling, a clever and comfortable fit, and dozens of little touches that showed that the designers knew exactly what their audience needed.

Except… they don’t sound that good. They don’t sound bad, in fact, I doubt anyone would dislike the sound, I just don’t think anyone would like it either. It’s innocuous. They were also designed to sound like that. It’s brilliant, actually. Bose knows their audience isn’t audiophiles, it’s mainstream, and these will sound “fine” to anyone (i.e. the biggest audience possible). It’s the safe bet of mediocrity that is the hallmark of mainstream audio.

Or how about last year's Panasonic ST60. Probably the greatest TV I’ve ever reviewed. The price/performance ratio had never been that good, and probably won’t be again for many, many years. The picture was fantastic, it had all the right features, and cost far less than the competition.

Except… it was a plasma. It wasn’t as bright as an LCD, didn’t do as well in bright rooms as other plasmas and LCDs, and it still carried the antiquated perceptions about plasma. It also didn’t look quite as good as the best plasmas from last year (hardly a fault, they were the best looking TVs ever).

These were two of the best products I’ve seen, and yet, not perfect.

Swing and a miss

Then there’s the near misses. Philips was a MASTER at this. We reviewers would joke that Philips engineers would come up with an amazing new product, then right before shipping it, they’d ask “OK, how can we mess this up just a little.” The Hue is a great example of this. Cool product, interesting design, stupefying awful app that makes them a fraction of the product they could have been.

So where do these things go wrong? Well, it’s important to realize that in nearly every case, dozens or hundreds of people are involved with the design of a product. More than that, the accountants are taking the movie. Maybe the designer specified a $0.50 capacitor, but the accountants said that was too expensive, so they required a $0.05 capacitor. That could easily be enough to change the performance, especially if we’re talking about speakers.

And you know what, sometimes these things just aren’t tested. I’ve reviewed countless products that clearly had never been tested by a human. Cost, laziness, not caring, any number of reasons this can happen, and it’s pretty inexcusable (and certainly a good reason to read reviews before you buy something).

Conclusion

This shouldn’t be taken as an apology of shoddy work by manufacturers. In fact, quite the opposite. They need to work harder to get products better.